noci
04 Aug 2005, 06:55 PM
dear fellow members,
[posted this question in this forum because it's *not* about SEO, page rank or any of that]
i have a fairly complex question regarding the implementation of google on-site search, or put differently, what are the limitations & ramifications of adding a "search this site with google" toolbar on my page?
i would like to add the infamous google bar on certain of my sub-pages, already filled out with an appropriate search term corresponding with the contents of that sub-page, so that users can find related themes on my site.
technically, none of this is a problem, yet i can't make sense of google's Terms Of Service.
a) is it legal for me to pre-check the "this site" button? [as opposed to having the "the web" button checked by default?]
b) may i exclude the "the web" button? [i suppose this is not proper conduct. and after all, if people decide to search the web instead, that'd obviously speak volumes about the quality of my site :flip: ] nonetheless, some users are, err, technically challenged...
c) are there alternative on-site-search-for-free providers with apparently more lenient Ts-O-S'?
d) is there any problem with me linking to a google site specific search, that is having, say, a text link that says "search for [STUFF] on [MYSITE] with google" that points to i.e.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&q=[STUFF]+site%3A%2F%2F[MYSITE]&btnG ........
(on a second thought, perhaps this would even be the most "usable" solution as it does *exactly* what i want without giving any extra options. now this may sound limiting, but i came to appreciate strict user guidance over the years.)
i'd love to hear in what ways you have dealt with these problems.
and yes, these kind of maneuvers are needed because we don't run a database-driven site with a custom search option (there's many reasons to that & it can't be changed for the time being-- plus, google is by now almost synonymous with "searching", so there's another incentive for me to offer this functionality to our visitors.)
thank you very much for reading this!
bye,
max
[posted this question in this forum because it's *not* about SEO, page rank or any of that]
i have a fairly complex question regarding the implementation of google on-site search, or put differently, what are the limitations & ramifications of adding a "search this site with google" toolbar on my page?
i would like to add the infamous google bar on certain of my sub-pages, already filled out with an appropriate search term corresponding with the contents of that sub-page, so that users can find related themes on my site.
technically, none of this is a problem, yet i can't make sense of google's Terms Of Service.
a) is it legal for me to pre-check the "this site" button? [as opposed to having the "the web" button checked by default?]
b) may i exclude the "the web" button? [i suppose this is not proper conduct. and after all, if people decide to search the web instead, that'd obviously speak volumes about the quality of my site :flip: ] nonetheless, some users are, err, technically challenged...
c) are there alternative on-site-search-for-free providers with apparently more lenient Ts-O-S'?
d) is there any problem with me linking to a google site specific search, that is having, say, a text link that says "search for [STUFF] on [MYSITE] with google" that points to i.e.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=de&q=[STUFF]+site%3A%2F%2F[MYSITE]&btnG ........
(on a second thought, perhaps this would even be the most "usable" solution as it does *exactly* what i want without giving any extra options. now this may sound limiting, but i came to appreciate strict user guidance over the years.)
i'd love to hear in what ways you have dealt with these problems.
and yes, these kind of maneuvers are needed because we don't run a database-driven site with a custom search option (there's many reasons to that & it can't be changed for the time being-- plus, google is by now almost synonymous with "searching", so there's another incentive for me to offer this functionality to our visitors.)
thank you very much for reading this!
bye,
max